Learning to use Patchwood (from PFW Aroma Chemicals)

I'm working on a new perfume using a new aroma chemical called "Patchwood." Patchwood was developed by PFW Aroma Chemicals and they are trying to promote its use through a contest and, yes, I'm taking a shot at it myself.

Patchwood has two qualities that might seem like opposites. Patchwood has a high impact, it hits you like a ton of bricks (rush and open the window, please!) and you quickly find yourself searching for ways to tone it down, to control it, to dilute it. It's got a nice woody aroma and can even serve as a top note in a fragrance but it can quickly overwhelm you, even in small doses.

But unlike high impact aroma chemicals which tend to be highly volatile and thus have short odor lives, Patchwood has a LONG odor life and, moreover, it gives long life to the elements that surround it. None of this business of disappearing from a smelling strip in 15 minutes. Here we're talking about DAYS!

As to my own project with Patchwood, I'm rushing to get it together so -- initially - my fragrance will be simple and, I'll admit, a bit crude. I've laid a foundation for my fragrance -- which has now lasted for more than 72 hours on a smelling strip, and still retains some top and middle notes. Now I've just got some blending to do, to smooth out the transitions between aroma materials, and then a few "decorations," to add a bit of originality. Then I'm done.

Now to you, all this may seem pretty routine. It's the way perfume is made. But what excites me is that I can look back to the starting point of my career in perfumery (not all that long ago!) and to the training that got me started, the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course.

If you know anything about the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course you know that the only perfumery materials you work with in the beginning are 25 aroma "bases" that demonstrated the 25 aroma groups that are part of the PerfumersWorld teaching method. These bases ("Fleuressence" is the PerfumersWorld trade name for them) are neither essential oils nor single molecule aroma chemicals. They are traditional perfumery bases that give you a simple way to begin crafting perfumes like a professional and, if you have any nose for it at all or any intellectual or artistic curiosity, you'll soon find yourself adding additional aroma materials to your "library" of small bottles, to get more subtle touches to your perfumes and more nose-precise results.

The fellow who created the PerfumersWorld Foundation Course believes that there are a great number of people who COULD become successful perfumers, if only they had some training. The Foundation Course his is way of offering them just that. From my own personal experience, I believe that he is correct. Personally, from the moment I started working with his 25 "Fleuressence" bases, I knew that even greater excitement lay ahead.

My current efforts to develop a perfume using Patchwood -- this brand new aroma chemical -- tells me that the excitement in perfumery that lies ahead for me will be even greater than that which I have enjoyed on my perfumery path to this point.